Kant’s metaphilosophy has three main parts: (1) an essentialist project (“What is philosophy?”); (2) a methodological project (“How do we do philosophy?”); and (3) a taxonomic project (“What are the different parts of philosophy, and how are they related?”). This paper focuses on the third project. In particular, it explores one of the most intriguing yet puzzling aspects of Kant’s philosophy, viz. the relationship between what Kant calls ‘pure’ philosophy vs. ‘applied’, ‘empirical’ or what we can broadly refer to as (...) ‘impure’ philosophy. (As we shall see, in order to be able to address this third project, we shall also need to examine the other two projects in detail.) My plan is as follows. First, I discuss four main areas of pure vs. impure philosophy: (i) ‘pure logic’ vs. ‘applied logic’; (ii) ‘rational psychology’ vs. ‘empirical psychology’; (iii) ‘pure metaphysics of nature’ vs. ‘physics’ and (iv) ‘pure morality’ or a ‘metaphysics of morals’ vs. ‘moral anthropology’, ‘practical anthropology’ or ‘applied moral philosophy’. Based on this, I identify four key differences between pure and impure philosophy. Second, I critically examine four different readings of Kant’s views about the status of ‘impure’ philosophy: (a) that it is not genuine philosophy; (b) that it is bad or inferior philosophy; (c) that it is instrumentally valuable; and (d) that it constitutes an indispensable part of Kant’s philosophy, both in a theoretical and practical sense. I argue that Kant is best interpreted as endorsing readings (c) and (d). Third, I offer some concluding remarks. (shrink)

A comprehensive and practical study tool, introducing Kant's thought and key works and exploring his continuing influence.

The article suggests that the Kantian account of mental illnesses is part of his study of logic in an attempt to claim, above all, that they hinder the training of attention, which will later allow us to publicly pursue knowledge. To this, the author elucidates the epistemic place that Kant gives to attention (_Aufmerksamkeit_)_ _in his transcendental, metaphysical, and anthropological remarks, given the important role it plays in the public elaboration of knowledge. Addressing the place that Kant gives to mental (...) weaknesses and illnesses in his anthropology lessons, the article sheds light on some correlations between these pathologies and attention, considering that mental weaknesses, as well as, mental illnesses warp, or are caused by, the fragile attention with which we direct our thoughts. This permits to shed light on a Kantian ideal related to the sovereignty of our attention, understood as a condition of possibility of the individual autonomy. (shrink)

En la presente investigación propongo el concepto de prudencia epistémica. La prudencia epistémica es la habilidad social para influir en los demás para fines socio-cognitivos. Como habilidad pragmática, la prudencia epistémica consiste no sólo en una descripción de los orígenes empíricos del error, sino en la habilidad social para evitar el error y otros males cognitivos frutos del egoísmo lógico y otros vicios epistémicos.

El objetivo de este artículo es caracterizar el tratamiento de los conceptos de claridad y oscuridad en los Apuntes de Lecciones de Antropología de la “década silenciosa” de Kant. El estudio tiene tres momentos. En primer lugar, se describen las condiciones de la claridad y la oscuridad de nuestras representaciones. En segundo término, se reconstruye la argumentación por medio de la que Kant cuestionaba el modo como Baumgarten presentaba esas nociones en la parte de la psicología empírica de su Metaphysica. (...) Por último, se exponen dos aspectos pragmáticos de la investigación de esas nociones: permite elucidar algunas condiciones subjetivas para la posibilidad de las ciencias, facilita la comprensión de un aspecto de la naturaleza humana, dando con ello un recurso provechoso para la intervención en la vida mundana. (shrink)